


What Are You Good For If Not War?

by itsnotirony



Series: What About Our Allies [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not Romance, Stiles Stilinski Saves The Day, Strong Language, but there is an engagement, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28511724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnotirony/pseuds/itsnotirony
Summary: Theo enlists Corey's help in infiltrating Monroe's HQ. It is not fun and it does not go well.
Relationships: Corey Bryant/Mason Hewitt
Series: What About Our Allies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088570
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. What are you good for if not war?

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly began writing a Corey POV because he is by far my favourite character in the series (I thought instead of explaining why, I would write a fanfic) and no-one else seems to care much about him. So I wrote a story (which is kind of a mess and still needs a bit of editing), and then I wrote this prequel for it (which is shorter and easier to edit), but that left all the set-up in the sequel. I don't want to write the set up twice, so here it is...
> 
> The war goes on and on, and Corey and Mason have survived a year and a half of university, studying classics and chemistry respectively. They're not actively fighting because Mason is human and Corey is a useless fighter, but they support the rest of the pack with Research, Ideas, and Friendship.
> 
> The second chapter is just a bonus chapter.

The night was warm, and Corey and Mason took their time walking home from the college bar. It was only a little past midnight. The full moon was in the sky, lighting their way where the street lights didn’t, and there were no werewolves in sight. Mason was mildly drunk, and Corey was cheerful enough to seem drunk, and they were discussing whether toast could be eaten cold, which was a pointless exchange of words that made them both laugh a little too much. They kissed by the door because Mason couldn’t find the keys and Corey had no patience for keys.

Corey was still laughing when he saw Theo sitting on the roof of a car on their driveway, and his laughter died without leaving a trace. His first thought was that something happened with the pack, that death they always expected. But Theo’s demeanour was mild, and the car was parked neatly.

“Shit,” he said, nudging Mason’s attention to the intruder. Mason sighed and rolled his eyes and whispered, “must they ruin everything?” before remembering that Theo could hear not just their whispers but also their heartbeats.

“’Evening Theodore,” Mason said, still drunk but trying not to sound it, “what’s up?”

Corey could tell by the way Theo looked at him with a smirk that this might not be a tragedy, but it was not going to be good and neither of them were going to like it. Theo gracefully hopped off the car and sauntered over to them, over the neatly trimmed lawn and geraniums.

“Just visiting,” he shrugged with that exaggerated nonchalance that Corey had once believed signified power and learned in time was only another lie, “how are you doing?”

“We’re fine,” Corey said glancing around the quiet neighbourhood just in case they _were_ about to be attacked by a band of hunters, “Monroe doesn’t care about us, you know that.”

This wasn’t exactly a lie, but the truth was more complicated: Monroe was already dealing with _Scott McCall_ and could not risk an _enraged Scott McCall_. So as long as they didn’t make themselves an obvious nuisance, Monroe left Mason and Corey alone.

“Yes, but,” Theo said, walking into their house because Mason had finally located the keys and was holding the door open for them, “she’s crazy so you can’t be sure.”

“Thanks for the concern?”

“You’re welcome.”

Corey considered their guest for a moment as he sat himself down comfortably on an armchair. Theo wanted something from them, and he would not leave until he got it, so there was nothing Corey or Mason could do to take this evening back.

“Do you want some coffee?” Corey offered, as a way of making up for the lack of enthusiasm. He left Mason and Theo in the sitting room where they had already started a discussion about Theo’s horrific car and Mason’s lament about how his parents wouldn’t buy him anything that wasn’t considered sensible. It was the one thing Corey agreed on with the Hewitts; given a sports car, Mason would die within a week.

After Corey returned with some coffee, cookies, and a conservative three minutes of chit-chat, Theo finally got to the point.

“Corey, I need you to come with me for a few days,” he had kept his voice conversational, trying to make it seem like it was an uncomplicated request. Like he was suggesting they go see a movie or something. To Theo’s eternal surprise, Corey was too wary nowadays to put up with that kind of shit from him.

“You’ve finally decided on robbing a bank?” he asked flatly. He was already trying to come up with a polite and friendly way to refuse when Theo actually laughed, self-consciously. He sipped his coffee, pretending to think through the question.

“Not exactly. Banks may be an evil institution, but they don’t pose an immediate threat. Monroe does.”

“Fuck. No,” Corey countered, giving up on politeness because he already knew where this was going. Theo had been planning this since he found out where Monroe’s base was. Scott hadn’t let anyone make any move to attack it, so if he was still investigating the place it would make sense for Corey to take a look around without attracting attention. But it wasn’t Scott asking, it was Theo, who was not going to want to just creep around and gather information.

Mason buried his head in his hands and groaned.

“Theo,” Mason said, slowly, enunciating every word very carefully, “how many times do you want to hear this? If Corey gets hurt on one more of your unnecessary, suicidal schemes, I will _gut_ you, with a blunt, serrated knife.”

Corey couldn’t help smiling while Mason spoke. He turned his head, squeezed Mason’s hand and kissed his cheek.

“You’re so sweet,” Corey told him.

Their guest, watching this exchange with a bored, annoyed look, leaned forwards and clasped his hands together in the mockery of a plea. There was something mean in his eyes and Corey braced himself for the worst.

“The rest of your pack are out there, risking their lives every day so that you two can sit here and cuddle in peace. Corey, don’t you think you owe them _something?_ ”

Mason reacted fast and with a sharp, cold fury. He stood, letting go of Corey’s hand and glaring at Theo. Corey cast his gaze to the floor, trying stop himself from shaking, because Theo was _right_ and he was _always_ right. Theo never opened his mouth if he wasn’t 100% certain that what he was saying was going to in some way manipulate the conversation. There was nothing Corey could do to argue with him in this case.

All the other times, Theo had framed Corey’s ability to help as a choice, and Corey had always hoped that this would continue indefinitely. He didn’t leave him a choice this time around.

“Get the fuck out, Theo,” he heard Mason say. But Mason’s will was inconsequential in this case, and Mason wasn’t even arguing. It wasn’t his choice to make. _It wasn’t even a choice._ Risking his life was a duty and if Corey wanted to be a part of the pack, he had to pay the dues in blood. With his meagre strength and one useful superpower.

Theo left the house with no further argument. Mason, still breathing like he’d run a marathon, sat back down beside Corey and reached for his hand. He kissed him, wondering if this was going to be the last time, then looked in his eyes and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Scott would never ask this of you.”

“Scott hasn’t won the war yet.”

Theo was waiting in the car, engine already murmuring in a quiet idle. It was some kind of expensive pseudo-sports car he had acquired from Peter, the make and model of which Corey did not and would never care about. He tossed a bag of spare clothes in the boot and sat silently in the passenger seat.

“Took you long enough,” Theo said with a smirk.

It took Corey a minute to fasten the seatbelt with shaking hands, but by that time Theo was already revving the engine and tearing down the quiet suburban street.

Somehow, Corey was asleep by the time Theo manoeuvred the car skilfully into a derelict car park in the basement of an abandoned factory building. It was three AM. The place was pitch black and cold and Theo liked it that way, but he handed Corey a torch. It was thoughtful of him, Corey realized – Theo didn’t need lights, but he had enough empathy to know that Corey did.

“What is this place?” he asked. They were the first words he had spoken to Theo since they left the house. He hadn’t even spoken up when Theo rejected call after call from the alpha.

“I need to sleep,” Theo said, “this is where we spend the night.

“Oh,” Corey sighed unhappily, casting the torch light over the grimy walls and even grimier floors. His voice echoed in the emptiness, though he was trying to speak softly. “Lovely. Can we not just sleep in the car?”

“Of course not, that would be too conspicuous,” Theo said, and though he couldn’t see, he knew Theo had just rolled his eyes. He wondered if Theo was doing this as some sort of punishment. “The first thing they would do is set the car on fire.”

Something was scuttling about in the dark on the other side of the car park, but Theo didn’t react so Corey reckoned it was probably just a rat. He would have preferred hunters to rats though. He reached out with his awareness into the colours of the floors and the walls and made himself invisible. It wouldn’t make a difference, but he still felt safer.

“We could have stayed at my place through the night,” he complained as Theo led him up to a higher floor of the factory.

“We couldn’t have,” Theo said, being more patient than Corey had expected, “Mason would have slit my throat while I slept.”

Corey smiled, before realizing that Theo was only being manipulative in admitting this. Despite knowing this, to his dismay, he found himself hating Theo less. It was the infuriating thing about him, the way he used the truth to lie sometimes.

“Anyway, Corey, you’re not sleeping. I need you to learn how to pick a lock by tomorrow, which is,” he looked at his watch, “huh, today. Obviously. It’s three AM. In five hours, we leave for Monroe’s camp.”

Nonplussed by Corey’s dismay, he dumped a bunch of blankets on the concrete floor, then pointed to a briefcase he had also been carrying. Corey had assumed it contained blueprints, or plans, but when he opened it he found it filled with padlocks and a collection of small, thin tools. He was too tired for this. He didn’t even have the capacity to feel angry any more.

“Wake me if you think there’s danger,” Theo said.

Then Corey found himself effectively alone in a cold, grimy, abandoned factory, standing guard over Theo while the man slept, cursing in whispers at the locks and lock-picks that refused to make sense. Theo had drawn up a booklet of instructions and exercises for him to practice, which he did, dutifully, because if Theo wanted him to know this, then it might make it less likely that he die tomorrow (today). The handwriting was surprisingly legible, but the diagrams made no sense, so Corey ended up having to find a better set of instructions on google. He cried three times, convinced that this misery was how he would spend the last night of his life.

By the time Theo woke, Corey had the now unlocked padlocks packed up neatly back in the briefcase. He was resting with his back to the wall, staring morosely at the dawn moving through one of the broken windows. The factory was even worse in daylight.

“Is this what your life is like?” he asked softly. Theo blinked the sleep out of his eyes. There had been a few minutes an hour ago when he’d muttered death threats, then pleas for help through some kind of nightmare, but Corey didn’t wake him because nightmares were easier to forget if you slept all the way through.

“Sometimes,” Theo said.

“I’m sorry.”

A barely perceptible flash of shame crossed Theo’s face, but he hid it quickly. Corey only noticed it because he had been looking for it.

“Fuck, it’s late!” Theo exclaimed, glancing at his watch without really seeing it, “let’s go!”

Corey decided to sleep through the drive to Monroe’s camp, because that was the easiest way to deal with Theo’s driving. His eyes were tired from working through the padlocks by torch light, and he was cold and miserable, and all Theo had to eat were tasteless protein bars. He called Mason, then fell asleep listening to him talk.

Theo woke him just before noon, though the clouds made everything dreary and grey and Corey thought for a second that he was back home. Theo was looking at the sky with a satisfied expression, as if he had ordered this weather.

“You ready?” he asked, tossing Corey another protein bar and a bottle of water. It was not the worst breakfast he’d ever had, and it was not even the worst situation in which to eat breakfast, and this thought was threatening to make him annoyed. Corey took his time eating, working to diminish the resentment he felt towards Theo because if he didn’t he would hold that grudge forever. He explained to himself that Theo was only doing what he could to save them all. He was _saving them_ all. He was being heroic.

He watched the forest to their right. Monroe’s camp was meant to be somewhere in the middle of it, if she hadn’t moved yet. It would be a long, difficult trek, and Corey would have to keep them both invisible the whole time. Failure could mean injury and death --- the forest would be crawling with hunters. It was a shame, Corey thought, that such a beautiful landscape was ruined that way. He’d never really been into hiking, but the supernatural had made him actively avoid the countryside for years.

“I’m ready,” he said eventually, though he wasn’t. He disappeared into the landscape, and Theo took his hand to join him in the invisible plane.

The first hunter they came across was a watcher, sitting on the lowest branch of a maple with a pair of binoculars that Corey hoped were not infra-red. He could, with effort, disguise his own blackbody spectrum --- Mason had convinced him to attend his quantum electrodynamics course lectures, and others in optics, both of which had been mostly incomprehensible to him, but surprisingly helpful. Doing so with anyone else in tow while trying not to break any twigs underfoot, however, was almost impossible. The forest floor was dry and crunchy with last year’s fall, so their only hope was that the watcher would assume there were mice in the brush.

They managed to sneak past her, though, and thereafter Corey gained some confidence. It still took about four hours to get to Monroe’s lair, and by that time his nerves were jittery and he felt eyes watching them every time he wasn't looking at the trees. Being this nervous for an extended period of time was exhausting.

The building was some kind of old military concrete structure with one entrance, no windows, and guards posted at intervals around it. They climbed over the perimeter fence, then waited by the entrance for anyone to pass by, holding back against the wall as much as they could so that no-one would brush past them. It was another hour before a group of hunters went through the door and they sneaked in after them.

“The worst is over,” Theo whispered, and Corey wanted so much to believe him, “Monroe’s not here today, I made sure of that.”

_Monroe_ _i_ _s not the only one who want_ _s_ _us_ _dead_ , he wanted to say, but refrained. At this point, his reluctance would only serve to annoy Theo. Once they got to the vault, Theo looked at his watch and held back.

“In about twelve minutes, someone should open the door,” he whispered, “you can follow them in, then pack any stacks of cash you can find. Any mysterious chemicals too, or weapons that look especially dangerous.” He handed Corey a pair of empty duffel bags that he’d been carrying, but Corey shook his head and refused them.

“Where are _you_ going?”

“I wanted to check what’s in the offices upstairs.” Theo looked at his watch impatiently.

“This was not the plan.”

“Corey, we’re here already. We might as well get what we can, and besides, I can smell the wolfsbane from here. It may not kill me, but I don’t _like_ it _._ ”

Then he disappeared down the corridor and Corey was left alone. The place was lit by horrible fluorescent lights attached to the walls, which left the ceilings dark and infinite. Hunters walked past occasionally, but Corey had to wait the full twelve minutes until a man stopped by the door to the vault and tapped in a code. Four-nine-nine-eight, probably, but it was difficult to read in the dark and the man typed too fast. Besides, there was also a fingerprint scanner.

Corey slipped in after him, clinging to the wall as the hunter closed the vault. Opening it from the inside would be no issue, he noticed with relief, but he would have to make sure no-one was present on the other side. The vault itself was a medium-sized room, stacked with crates and boxes of weapons, shelves filled with jars of herbs and liquids with terrifying labels. Wolfsbane was woven through everything in pretty trailing wreaths and bunches. There were cabinets that were locked, despite being placed in a vault, and Corey assumed that’s where the money would be.

The hunter left the room with a strange-looking crossbow and a pack of arrows that looked like they were meant to hold poison. Corey listened to the door lock, then waited until the footsteps receded far enough before unsticking himself from the wall to explore the space. Walking further into the room, he noticed that there was another room further back, separated by reinforced glass walls and a solid door. It was lit, and someone was inside, sitting at an empty desk and writing furiously on a letter pad, and Corey had time to wonder whether this was a prisoner or a hunter before the woman looked up and he saw that it was Monroe.

He had almost forgotten what she looked like, but seeing her brought back every memory of that year in Beacon Hills when she began building her army. The fear and persecution and the knowledge that his classmates might choose to kill him any day for no reason at all. He took a step back and caught his foot on a shelf with a quiet tap, glass jars rattling on their ledges. Monroe stilled, staring at the place he stood, then she smiled like she was trying not to smile.

Corey forced himself to move the few steps it took to reach the other side of the aisle, retreating in careful, silent steps. There was no-where to go where she wouldn’t find him, but he tried anyway. She was holding a gun in her hand so casually it made him feel sick. Did Theo know? Wouldn’t he have heard her heartbeat on the other side?

Did Theo _know_?

For a moment, Corey was too distracted by the idea that Theo had betrayed him _again_ to a literal _monster_ , to notice that the monster had heard him breathing. She was staring right at him.

He held his breath and moved again, picking up a nasty looking spear on the way. She was keeping her back to the wall, wisely, but if he could throw something at her fast enough, then it wouldn’t matter. He could probably stab her with greater efficacy if he went closer but she was still repulsive and terrifying and he just did not have the courage. He set his feet out carefully, readied his aim and… missed.

She laughed, glancing at the weapon, then began to confidently walk in his direction, so he took hold of the shelf on the left and toppled it at her, then ran to the door. He was almost done with the wheel, he could feel the door give way, then he felt the pinprick on his neck. He lashed out at her, thinking she was behind him, but she had already moved away, and his limbs were sluggish. The world spun in front of his eyes and he dropped to his knees to steady it. It was, he remembered, similar to being disastrously drunk. It had been _years,_ he thought with a small half smile, then he remembered that he was about to die.

“Ah, Corey,” Monroe said, pensively, “you wouldn’t have tried this on your own though. Where’s the rest, I wonder?”

It didn’t even sound like she was expecting an answer, and Corey wasn’t going to give it. Through the haze in his mind, he managed to discern that this meant that Theo had not sold him out to Monroe. At least not that Monroe was aware of. He just hadn’t been expecting anyone to set up their office in a cold dark vault, so he didn’t listen for her heartbeat.

He crawled a little away from her with what strength he had left, and leaned his back on the wall. It was lovely and cool on the back of his head and not having to hold his spine upright made the world spin a little bit less.

“What was that?” he asked, hearing his own voice slurred and far away. Like with alcohol, his fears had faded away. It was nostalgic, really. If he could feel like this every time he was fighting for his life, he would win a lot more fights.

“I’m not going to tell you,” she said, “mostly because it’s still a work in progress… we keep loosing our test subjects. How do you feel?”

He laughed at her bitterly. He had known she was experimenting on any supernaturals she managed to capture to find new and exciting ways of killing them, but he’d never really internalized it and suddenly it was made so much more real. He felt a thing like hopelessness crawl up his throat, and he hated her so much for hurting people like him, and for working so hard to get better at it. He hated her like he’d never hated anything else in the world. It was such a horrible feeling, horrible and pure, only _hatred_.

“I know you didn’t choose this,” she said, perhaps seeing it in his eyes, “so very few of you do. It’s such a shame-”

“Shut the _fuck_ _up_. I’m not…” He put some effort into breathing because his lungs were starting to feel heavy and slow. “I’m not interested in what you think.”

Monroe flinched, then glared at him.

“Do you think the others know what’s happening?”

Corey squinted at her in confusion.

“I hope you stay alive long enough to warrant a rescue, is what I mean.”

Corey would have loved to be rescued right then, but only if it meant Monroe’s death. Theo was too smart to try and take the entire army on his own to save someone who was already dying though. Clearly Monroe didn’t understand this. After making sure he didn’t have the strength to fight her off, or stab her unexpectedly, she rifled through his pockets to find his phone, then looked at the lock screen thoughtfully. He clenched his hands into fists.

“Please,” she said impatiently, “I’ll break your hand if I have to.”

But his fear was already gone, and he wasn’t going to make this easy for her. With a practised motion, she twisted his wrist until it broke, unlocked his phone with his fingerprint and stepped away again, just in case. The disturbing thing was that he didn’t even feel the pain. He heard the bone break, he could _see_ it was twisted the wrong way, but he felt nothing. It made it somehow _worse_.

She was disappointed, he could see, at the lack of interesting pack secrets on his phone. She was disappointed that they weren’t idiots. He couldn’t see who she called, but by the vicious smile on her face when they picked up he gathered that it was Scott. Corey heard the voice, tinny and confused.

“Corey?”

He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually called Scott, so of course Scott would be confused. Corey hoped this would make him think twice about actually listening to the woman.

“You failed, McCall,” she said.

“What?” Then Scott muttered something that sounded like a string of oaths and included ‘ _Theo_ ’.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes.”

Scott was silent. The line died.

Eventually she gave up trying to get any information out of his phone and let it clatter on the concrete floor, frustrated. Still just waiting to die in that strange, drunken haze, he watched her gather what he believed were explosives, tape a stack together, and wire it up to a timer. She did this again with another stack and set up a simple trip wire by the door.

Then she set the timed bomb on a high shelf, carefully making sure he could see the clock (proving that she was a psychopath) gathered the cash from the cabinets and a handful of chemicals into the two duffel bags he had brought and left the room, locking it behind her.

09:99, 09:98, 09:97.

He took a deep breath, and then another. An alarm began to blare, but it was muffled by the thick walls of the vault. He watched the clock for a minute before realizing that his lungs were no longer failing. The break in his wrist began to itch.

The drugs were either wearing off (which was unlikely, given that she _wanted_ him dead) or Monroe had triggered his healing process by breaking his hand. Corey laughed to himself, realizing that he was going to live thanks to her stupid, unnecessary cruelty. Or, at least, she’d given him a chance.

Slowly, almost giving up halfway there, he managed to reach his phone from where she’d dropped it, and called his boyfriend, the genius with half a chemistry degree. Mason picked up before the first ring.

Thank God for Monroe’s stupid cell signal repeater.

“Christ,” Mason said, “you’re alive.”

“For now,” Corey admitted, “but I’ll need your help. You know how to defuse a bomb, right?”

“Oh fuck, uh. I can google it? Or call Stiles. Let’s do both, but don’t hang up. I love you.”

Corey disarmed the trip wire first, in case Theo did decide to try for a rescue and blew them both up in the process. By the time that was done his limbs were usable enough that he could stand and it only took another three minutes to get the bomb off the shelf. He even managed not to drop it. He sent Stiles as much detail as he could, then waited while the clock ticked down towards zero.

02:47, 02:46, 02:45

Corey wondered how big the explosion would be, and how much it was going to hurt. It would have probably been better if the drug had killed him.

“Mason,” he said, “if I die, don’t blame Theo.” It took a lot of effort to say this because Corey wanted very much to blame Theo, but Theo was probably going to die in the explosion too. The vault was filled with ammunition and grenades. Mason was silent for a moment, probably debating whether or not it would be moral to lie to a dying man, so Corey continued, “don’t join the war, either. I’d like to die believing you’re going to live forever.”

“I won’t blame Theo,” Mason said, “I’m going to blame Monroe, and I’m going to destroy her.”

01:13, 01:12, 01:11

“Thank you,” Corey said, knowing by Mason’s tone that it had been pointless to ask him for that kind of promise. He decided to try another, “if I survive this, will you marry me?”

Corey knew he was being selfish and unfair and he could hear because Mason was already crying, but he was going to die and he wanted to know the answer. And as much as he didn’t want to get engaged over the phone, while drugged and stuck in a creepy vault full of weapons and rigged explosives, it was better than nothing.

“Yeah,” Mason managed to say.

00:31, 00:30, 00:29

“Corey,” Stiles’ voice interrupted their tragically romantic moment, “you’re gonna want to cut that thin red wire on the right. And uh, congrats.”


	2. Debrief

To his credit, Theo looked absolutely mortified (for half a second, and only because Mason was going to gut him with a blunt, serrated knife). He looked from Corey, who was sitting in the office at the back, sorting through some uninteresting documents and speaking in a hushed tone over the phone to Mason, to the explosives, the clock reading 00:14 and the toppled shelves. By that time the building had been evacuated by the alarm, but Corey remained in the vault for fear that Monroe had set up another tripwire on the other side, until Theo got back from the offices upstairs to see that she did in fact do that. A monster, but a smart one.

Corey said goodbye to Mason and hung up because Mason had realized that Theo was there and was beginning to sound a little murderous, then said to Theo, “she took the money, if that’s what you were after.”

Theo stared at him, carefully arranging his face so that it showed nothing.

Corey wondered whether Theo would blame him for the whole thing, because technically, if he’d been quiet enough, Monroe would never have found him, and he wouldn’t have lost the opportunity to acquire the funds. To his surprise --- though Theo didn’t and would never accept any blame --- he refrained from that particular comment.

“We should go,” he said instead, walking over to the timed bomb and starting to strip the wires, “Monroe’s going to get suspicious that this place didn’t blow up on time.”

“What did you find upstairs?”

“You don’t want to know,” Theo said, resetting the clock and re-winding the thin red wire that had almost killed Corey. The clock began to count down, and he felt a shiver run up his spine.

“Yeah, OK, let’s leave. You can tell me on the way.”

Theo kept his mouth shut until they were out of the forest. Corey kept them both invisible, because there were still hunters hanging around making sure the evacuation went smoothly. The atmosphere among them was anxious though, and they kept glancing back at the base nervously. When the building finally imploded, with less fire and more earthquake than Corey had expected, the forest was silent for ten seconds while they held their breath waiting for a forest fire to start. It didn’t. The hunters may be bigoted idiots, but they didn’t want to watch the world burn. It was this that made them so tragic.

“Scott!” Theo said, cheerfully.

Unsurprisingly, Scott McCall was waiting for them by Theo’s car, leaning on his motorbike and talking on the phone with a serious expression. He hung up when he saw them, his face twitched in an obvious attempt at hiding some emotion, then he casually walked up to Theo.

“Hey,” he said, “how did it go?”

Theo stared at him for a second, then ducked and avoided Scott’s fist by a fraction. Corey sighed, not even bothering to watch them grapple. Some words were yelled. Some of them sounded like they were about Corey, but were really about Scott’s rage at having had his authority rejected. Theo was once again threatened with being kicked out, and once again Scott decided, generously, to let him stay. Theo was _useful_ , and _dangerous,_ and Scott wasn’t quite aware but Theo _knew_ this. It was why he would never take Scott’s warnings seriously.

The argument was resolved in a few minutes, and Scott finally turned to Corey, who had taken that time to begin composing a long, romantic text to Mason in which he outlined his ideas for an engagement party. Monroe’s signal repeater having been destroyed, Corey wouldn’t be able to contact Mason until they reached at least a half-way civilized town.

“You should have called me,” Scott said, “I had no idea what he was up to.”

“Snitches,” Corey replied, “get stitches.”

This time Scott gave Theo no warning before he hit.


End file.
